Last night as I was watching the Presidential Debate a few things caught my eye, and because I don’t believe the pundits will talk about any of this I thought I would.
Part 1- A “WOW” moment
Although the debate was nothing new and a tie for all practical purposes there was one big “WOW” moment which grabbed my attention. Now, for a while now I have stated that, although no one will admit it, Obama has been running on a centrist Republican platform for the past few weeks; while McCain has been trying his hardest to run on a conservative Republican platform. Neither of them are what anything like the platforms they are running on, but based on the platform talking points these are their running platforms. The “WOW” moment came as McCain was talking about his economic policies and stated that he wants to use $300 billion tax payer dollars to buy up bad mortgages (alongside the $750 bailout he just voted for). I could not believe what had just happened in front of my eyes; McCain had jumped right over Obama and turned his own platform into that of a conservative Democrat! So now as it stands the Republican Candidate is running on a conservative Democrat platform and the Democratic Candidate is running on a centrist Republican platform; basically they’ve switched sides, and in the middle of a debate, I could not believe it. Now, do I believe that these platforms represent what they will do once they are in office? No, based on their histories I think McCain will be a centrist Republican and Obama will be a mid-liberal Democrat. I just find it interesting how no one is discussing this, Democrats who hate everything Republicans say are eating up everything Obama says on this platform, and Republicans still keep insisting that McCain is a solid conservative Republican, and more likely than not you will never hear about this “WOW” moment.
Part 2- The war in Iraq VS the war against Iraq
Another moment during the debate that got me going was when Obama talked about McCain’s poor judgment because the war in Iraq was not quick and we were not greeted as liberators, even though McCain said beforehand that both would be true. This has been brought up time after time over the past four years plus, and no one has corrected this misguided thought. The fact is there have been two different wars, our war against Iraq and our war in Iraq. These distinctions must be made: In March of 2003 we went to war against Iraq and toppled the regime in a matter of weeks, we were greeted as liberators as Iraqis toppled statues of Saddam and danced in the streets. However out of this came a power vacuum which filled with people who were glad that Saddam was gone not only because they hated him, but because they wanted to be in power themselves, and thus started the war in Iraq, which is a whole other war unto itself. Yes it was caused by the war against Iraq, but the war in Iraq is not the same war, we are not fighting the same enemy; instead of being the regime of Saddam Hussein it is against extremists funded by Iran and terrorists who want to get America out of the way so they can take the power. They are two different wars and this is a fact that needs to be acknowledged. Let me put it this way, after WWII after we toppled Hitler’s reign and the Soviets came in and took over in the vacuum was that still WWII? No, that was a new war, the Cold War. This is the same situation, except there is actually fighting this time.
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